Watercolor: 10 Easy Projects Anyone Can Paint

1. Introduction: Hi guys. I'm Peggy. I'm a hand lettering illustrator. In this class, I am presenting to you some watercolor basics and it's going to go over a plethora of different projects. First of all, we're going to be going over a tonal and opacity swatches and that's going to show you how to break down watercolor and properly decrease or increase your pigments and you'll also learn how to mix colors to create different hues and blending combinations, fully painting some branches and some leaves and flowers and [inaudible] a cactus, and we will also be going over some tricks that you can do with different types of materials. There's a lot packed into this class. It is targeted toward beginners and then also some tricks for people that had been water coloring for a bit. Either way, it's just something to sit back and enjoy and have some fun with some watercolors. I look forward to seeing you guys in the class. 2. Tools & Materials: When you get started collecting your tools for watercolor, I can't stress enough that paper is by far the most important. It's got to be 140 pounds or 300 grams. The reason for that is because the way that the watercolor paper is created, it actually has a texture and it's thick enough to where the water will sit on top of the paper rather than absorbing and then creating a bleed, which will blow out what you're trying to do or it will just stamp in the paper and ruin it. So the watercolor paper is crucial. I'd say the most common paper are by Canson and then Strathmore. This is a pretty good size pack. It's 12 by 18. It's good for the larger pieces, it's also good to cut and then you can use smaller pieces. But the Canson is typically my go-to. It's a little more inexpensive, but people do prefer Strathmore as well. I would just say, play around with different brands, see what you like best, but do make sure that it's 140 pound paper. Another option would be a smaller sketchbook and they have these, I don't even know, it's like pentelic, but I grabbed this on the go at a bookstore. But they are good for on the go stuff and you can just do a little doodles and those sketchbooks come in real handy. Moving into brushes, my favorite brushes by far are the low Cornell and I use the comfort brush. They have this velvety exterior, that make it, so it's really easy to grip the handle and they're ergonomic. It comes in a pack of four sizes, two, four, six and 10. You can get these on Amazon for 10 bucks or even lower if they're having a sale. I don't use anything, but round rushes for watercolor. It's so much easier to control when you have that angle option with pressure, similar to brush pens, if you've used brush pens, which moving into, we will also use the Tambo dual brush pens. If you don't have these, that's fine. It's just an optional section that you'll be able to learn about. These Tambo pens are actually water-based, so you can use them to create watercolor techniques, which is a lot of fun. The other suggestion that I would have, would be these Aquash by Pentel. They're great for travel because you can fill up this hollow area with water. You can also fill it up with ink, like India ink or whatever color you are wanting to use. So this just unscrews, and then you put water in here, screw it back on, and then it doesn't leek even though I just maid a mess, but I opened it. It doesn't leak, and then you just squeeze a little bit. Then you can see, you can control the amount of water that it disperses. I recommend these. I have two of them here, this is a larger tip, so the fine tip is really great for lettering, if you do any watercolor lettering. So those are the brushes that I'd recommend. There's abundance of options. I've used the more expensive ones, but I still come back to these ones here. I love them. They do exactly what I want, they don't shed, I have perfect control over my paints. So I swear by them. A couple of other things before we get into watercolor, I would grab a jar of water. You don't have to have a huge jar. It's nice because it won't saturate quite as quickly, and then your water won't be dirty quite as quickly, but I have a medium size jar and I also have this, it's just a little container, but I put a wet paper towel in here. You'll also want a dry paper towel. But I like doing the wet also just because that way I'm not taking away as much water. So if I don't want to get rid of water, but I just want to dab color, I'll use write in here, but I also have this guy, so that's helpful to have on hand. For in between drying, you can also use a hairdryer to get your watercolor to dry just a bit faster if you're waiting. You can also use an embossing tool. Just be careful with these. They do get really hot up to 650 degrees. So it's possible to burn your paper if you hold it too close in the same place for to long. So just use that with caution. You can do the same thing with blow dryer. Just make sure that you're moving and staying pretty far away. Moving into watercolor finally, so there's a bunch of options here. Most popular, it's tubes, in which case you would have a palette that you would build from. You would insert the colors that you want inside that pellet and then go from there. There's also the cake version, which is what I'm going to use for this class. Those are the two that you would most commonly find. If you do want to take watercolor pretty seriously, I would recommend going with the tubes, and then you can really customize exactly what it is that you are working off of. As far as brand choices go, Winsor and Newton and Secure coil are two that you may have herd of. They're really popular, they have high-quality and they're a good won to go to. If you don't want to break the bank and you're just doing this for hobby, I'm going to introduce to you the Confections by premium marketing and they have a bunch of different pallets. They have the classic, which is what this is. They have a lot of different pallets to choose from. This is the classics and it's easy because it's buildable for, we're going to create a color wheel and go off of blending and see colors that you can create with just some classic colors. The inside of this is awesome for travel. So it's got this hook on the side, it has this swatch paper inside of it when you buy it, and then it's got this area for larger palette work, and then it's got this smaller area. These are incredibly dense. They are so concentrated, the pigment on these are amazing. I will just pick some up with water and put it over on this side. You don't need a lot. This pallet is amazing. When you first open it, these are all individually wrapped, they're just these little pods hear. So I love these water color palettes. A less expensive option would be, like the artist loft pellets. They come with a ton of colors. You can obviously tell which ones that I like the most and it's pretty dirty, but that's normal because watercolor gets dirty. So these are just basically on the go, quick pods, that you can transfer over to this palette here. You can work directly off the cakes. I don't recommend too. I do it sometimes just because I known how much color I'm picking up, but it makes it more difficult to find the hues and tones that you want. So I would recommend transferring over here. Even though it may not look like there's a lot, you don't need a lot and you'll probably be surprised with how they transfer, the artist loft is a little trickier. So it's better for pretty light project. There are liquid watercolors available and these are great for just that very pigmented, very liquidity lines. So they're really good for brush lettering, and then there's these amazing Brusho, they are powder form. So you would lay the water down first, and then this is what they look like. So they're in these tubes and it has the color on here. But when you open them, they're just powder. You have to be really careful because they get really messy. But yeah, this powder in here and you just sprinkle it on there and it just expands. It's really cool. I'll show you guys that in a later segment. To get started, I would also grab a ruler and a piece of watercolor paper because we're going to create some tonal swatches. If you plan on using ink on your watercolor after or before, I would recommend the microns. They don't bleed and they're permanent. So this is really the only route that I go for watercolor. So that being said, I will see you in the next video and we'll create some tonal swatches. 3. Create Opacity and Tonal Swatches: I recommend setting up a grid of some kind. You don't have to, you can just use blank paper. But the grid, I like to have it just because it helps me space things out and see what I'm doing. When I was mentioning a ruler, that would be what would be for, you can use a pencil as well. If you haven't done that, and you want to, you can go ahead, and pause, and put some grids together if you want to. I also have a spritzer. You don't have to use this, but I like to spray my watercolors to get them ready to go. Then, I'm not going to use all of these colors. I'm only going to use the more vivid, more classic colors. Let's start with the pink first. What I want to do here is, I'm going to put some water on my palette, and you can do this with your brush or you can use a spritzer, and get some more water on your palette. Then once you have enough water in there to mix, go ahead and pick up some of that color, and just put it in here because you want this to be pretty transparent when you lay it down. Before that, if you wanted to just dab and see where you're at, I'm going to take the water down color, and I'm going to lay it on the first row of five squares. It's just like a wash. I just lay and apply the full belly of the brush and just drag it the whole way down. You want it nice and light. Then let that dry. Once that layers is dry, just do the same thing. Grab from the same area, except skip the first square, so start at the second, and then drag that the whole way down. Then let that layer dry. Once that's dry, go ahead and do the same thing just starting at the third square. What you're doing here is, you're building layers, and it's creating different shades. You're going from lighter to more of that vibrant color toward the end. With each layer, it's getting more pigmented as you can probably start to notice. Just keep going. Then you have a complete swatch that is buildable. Then I left a little bit of space because I also want to show you how to control the opacity instead of layering just with water alone. For the beginning here, we're going to start just where we were, lots of water, and you don't have to spray it on your palette. You can just use a little here, and then use a scrap piece of paper, or you can also use a dry paper towel just to see. This is going to be pretty transparent. I'm just going do a thin line down like this. Then to get a little more vibrant color. Looks good. I'll start here just in the middle just to the thin line here. Then if I want to go really opaque, I won't dip in the water, my brush is already wet. Then you have this nice vibrant color. You'll be able to tell once it's drier, but you can see those variations of opacity. There's different ways you can control that. You can let it dry and do more, or you can just add more water to create the lighter colors. Just keep doing exactly what we just did throughout to make the rest of your palate colors or the ones that you want to so you can see the variations. When you're switching to different colors, you really want to make sure that none of that color that was there before is left behind. Because what will happen is, it will mix and then you won't have that pure color that you're trying to work with. When you are finished creating your opacity swatches, we can move into doing our blending, where we get to experiment with different colors, and how they interact together which is one of the most exciting parts. You be amazed with how many colors you can come up with, just mixing different colors together, adding a third or a fourth, or even just varying degrees of one color. You can do equal parts or you can do one to eight ratio where you have just a little one color and then add a lot of the other. So lots of different options. We're going to play with those now. If you haven't already, after doing all of these, my water was pretty brown. If you haven't, go ahead and get yourself a new jar of water as well. What I would recommend doing also, before you get started with blending, is with the pencil or with the pen, write down the name of the colors that you're using. You can look back at this chart and reference exactly what colors you use. This is really helpful if you have a much larger palette with lot of colors. But we're just starting with the basics. I'm not sure what these colors are called. All I have here are just numbers. I like to name things. I think that the names are more fun. I'm going to go with an aquamarine, and then just this royal blue. So we have like an aquamarine, more of a navy, more of royal blue. Then we have this violet or purple. Then we have brown, gray, and black. Green, this is more of an apple green, it's not very rich. If you do want a rich green, I recommend adding some darker colors into that, which we'll go over. Then we've got yellow, orange, red, pink, and then white. I'm going to start with the aqua and the royal blue. You can abbreviate. I'm just going to write aqua and then blue. I'm just going to do it right underneath where I am going to put it. Then the blend will be all of these middle squares, the whole way down. I'm getting started. I'm just going to make a small area here. Because we're not doing a large area with these colors, you can just make little puddles just to make sure they're separated so they don't blend in together. Just like that. You can make these as saturated or as light as you want. The reason I have even more here as far as the chart, I can do an overall middle opacity, then I can do some mixing and blending, transparent, and more opaque colors. You'll be able to see the variations there as you work. I want this one to be just a little lighter. There we go. Again, that's personal preference. I'm just a bigger fan of the more transparent watercolors. Then we'll go into our blue. Then to mix these, we'll just do equal parts, and you want it when they're both wet. I'm going to start with the lighter color, because adding the darker colors in, I want to take baby steps to do it. Then if is just a little you want to add you can dab right on the cake and then just set it into this water and it'll disperse. Then you have this nice medium blue color. That's an example of blending and it's actually quite nice because you have this more of a teal blue and then you have more of the soft, cool tone blue. Then you have this middle area where it's more of a sky blue. Then with more transparency or lightning that up with more water, or white if you choose, that will get even lighter. For the next one I'm going to do the aqua again. I'm going to put the violet in with it and see what happens there. You guys don't be afraid of trying combinations even if you think that it's not going to look good. You just never know what you're going to get, you might fall in love with the new blend, and then you'll use that all the time. I encourage you to experiment. Then we'll get this violet color. Then mixing this together. Looks I got into the blue a little bit. Anytime that you have any mess up with color, just take a paper towel and just dab it. It will actually pick that right up. Makes it easy for watercolor opsis. This is going to just cool down that aquamarine again. See how it creates more of a periwinkle tone. I actually really like that a lot. Then you can add more violet to it, see what that does. Overall I want to stick with the 50/50 to see you have a structure of what we're looking at. Then next, I'm going to do the same, I'm going to do the aqua and the pink. Now go ahead and lay it down on the square. Since we're going to pull it over there anyway. Then grab some of my pink, put it in one of my small puddles that I made. There we go and then I'll mix that in with this middle which should just create more of a violet color similar to above. That's very similar. That's what that looks like. Blue and orange are opposite on the color wheel so mixing those together is going to create a brown color. Since red is so similar to orange it's going to do something very similar. Just as an example, I will show you aqua and the orange, and that should neutralize. Grabbing some of this, carrying it over, grabbing some of this orange. Putting that color in with this blue, we're going to create lighter brown color. See how that neutralizes. It creates this macky achy brownish color. That is because they are opposite on the color wheel. I'm going to show you adding some yellow, which is going to create a green. Oops, I'm writing orange. I'm going to start with yellow because it's lighter. Then I'll go and grab the blue aqua color. Then we will create a nice green color. Anytime that you want to reference as far as where to meet with color, color wheels are a great reference. Either one you make yourself. Do base it off of the actual color wheel though it's not something that you throw together as you want. It's very specific, and it's based off of the primary color. Anytime that you want to reference that, to figure out how to create a color just look at your color wheel, and you'll be able to discover what colors that need to be mixed together to create that. I will go into the green and red real fast, because I want to show you that nice neutral brown. Because this green is very apple, it's probably going to be a little lighter brown that I would like. You can always make this green a lot grassier if you will. But for the sake of this I don't want to get too complicated I just want to give you a general idea. This red is also a cool tone. What that means is rather than being more an orangey undertone or a neutral undertone where is that red red, it's almost got a pinky tone, purplely blue undertone. Those are what determine your cool tones versus your warm tones. Let's get this brown. Do you guys see that? That's a nice neutral brown that we're creating based of the opposites of the color wheel. If you don't have a brown, you know how to make one. Then let's go ahead and do a pink and an orange, which will come out more of a salmony color which can be quite nice. I don't know if you guys can tell I'm getting close to needing to clean my water because it's transferring to my paper which we don't want. I've got my orange and then I'm just going to do my pink in. See how that turns into that nice salmon color. It's one of my favorites. Then let's try pink with yellow. It's also going to have that salmon effect but it should be maybe a little bit lighter. Almost orangier and less pink but, also really nice. Then let's do the red and pink. You can also lay your wash down before you pick up the color. Let's say you don't want to create a puddle in your palate. All you do is just lay down. I realized that has a lot of color in it but I'm not going to worry about it, because we're just putting red in. But see all I did was I dipped. I'll show you again right here. I need to clean my water guys. Put down, just that water. Then I'm just going to dip my paint brush twice, and then just set that color in there. If it's not quite saturated you can always go back and dip again. Then same thing with red. Just be careful because you're going to have that pure pigment, and it can be a little too harsh like I put a little too much red in there. When it's still wet, all you have to do is take a paper towel and it soaks it right up. Then you can hit it with some water again. That creates another magentay color. Then doing the green and yellow is a lot of fun because it make lime color. Again this green is pretty light anyway. I'll create some fun here. Gets a lime color which is really fun. You guys just play with those colors because there's a lot of places that you can take it. It's a lot of fun to start blending these together. 4. Brush Control: Create Leaves: In this segment, we're going to go over different techniques with your brush. There's a lot of different things you can do with a round brush. To begin, if you get a little paint on your paintbrush, pressing gently on the side of your brush will create a thicker line whereas pressing lightly and more toward the tip has you a thinner line. Whenever you are doing something like a leaf, you want to start thin, press down and then lighten again. This may be different for you, it's different for everyone, but I find that my thin lines, when I drag them away from myself, I can get them a lot more of like that hairline finish. Then whenever I drag inward, I always want to go full belly on the brush. You might experiment with that and seen what's easiest for you. If you're creating that variation, you can start thin, press thick, thin again, thin, thick, thin. All you're doing is varying the pressure. It doesn't take much press and lift. Press, lift, press and lift. It can make for a really pretty design if you vary the amount of water that you have on your leaves and the amount of paint. One can be a lot more saturated, and one might be a little more transparent, which is really pretty like that. Really easy to do, it's just all in the control of your brush. This is the same with any lettering that you might want to do. As an example, I will use a much smaller brush, sky. I will just grab some of my blue. If you're a letterer, you would just real fine hairline up, come around and press down. I'm not quite have enough water in here. After that, lift up lightly, press down and then light again. Then if you find it gets too late, you can always go back and if you have enough water on your brush, it should spread to those areas. Then your down stroke and back up as nice and light. Little water brush effect was just fun to. Leaves are probably my favorite to make. I think it's really fun to mix the green and the blues. Anytime you're not happy with the amount of color or the color itself, just grab the new one and set it down where you just had your line and it will only go where the water is, it won't spread. Then press down and lift, press down and lift, down and lift. There is another one. 5. Wreath: In this video, I'm going to show you how to do the same technique, just in a wreath form, which is really simple. You're just going to do your circle and leaves. You don't have to do the actual circle. If you want to sketch it, you can. Just really lightly and then go back in with your brush to make your leaves. To do this, I'm just going to, really, lightly drag, and then press down, then lift. These brushes can make plenty of different sizes just depending on what you want. I was making quite a bit larger ones with these earlier. There you go. This is just going to be a really simple wreath I'm not going to do anything crazy to it. Just showing you how you can apply this technique in different methods but still really simple. Then before it gets to dry, I'm going to grab a different color and just set that in there. Because I want to add some depth, that can be really pretty if you just add just a little bit, and then continuing. Then you can add any design that you want on the inside, or it can be a word or letters. You can add more detail to the leaves, but that is it. Very simple. 6. Elaborate (but Simple) Leaf Design: I want to show you more of an elaborately leaf design. It's exactly what we just did, but it is build-able. Start off with just some nice thin lines. It's going to come up. Direction doesn't really matter. I just want you to play with branching these off because we're going to add leaves to all of them. Just keep them thin. [inaudible] doesn't matter, so you can vary that. It can be bolder. It can go in between. I always like to change it up, so I like some lines to be pretty vibrant and I like to be a lot more transparent. Then from here, we're going to do the same thing that we just did all over these branches. We are going to, nice thin line, thick and thin. If you want to, you can also add some more color into it. So if I want to add some pink to make that a little bit lighter, I can and I can even put that on the same branch. Then if you have anything that looks like this, it's like where the water is starting to run out, not just the paint. I would leave it because I think that it looks really pretty. We're about to get there, see how that. It just gets very brushy at that point and I think that looks really neat. Just make sure that your interchanging them and it's not just toward the bottom, or just one area that's concentrated. Because you want it to have that variation in it. But see it can be really pretty. I'm going to add some blue now. That is about it and I encourage you guys to play with blending and different opacity, different colors, bleeding into the other colors as well. Have fun with those. Those can make for a really pretty greeting cards or designs in general. 7. Feather: In this video I want to show you how to create a feather out of watercolor. You can choose to make this as bright or as realistic and color as you want to. I'm going to do something a little brighter just for fun. As we get into it, you can either sketch it first or you can just start painting right away. Using references of feather photos is really helpful, but if you want to, go ahead and walk through and I'll show you exactly how I would make mine. Getting started, I'm just dipping my brush in my water and then going directly to my palette. I'm going to do some yellow and orange and then a little bit of pink in here, and I'm going to start with my yellow. Then you can always use your paper towel for reference to see exactly where you're at or even a scratch piece of paper which is probably better to do because you have more of a realistic view of what it will look like on the paper. Keep in mind that there is that center of stem on the feather, and I'm going to avoid that in this one. You can always paint that up. I'm going to leave it alone because I wanted it to be negative space. I'm going to draw a line straight up with my brush on both sides and just leave that center alone. Let's see how there's that white negative space in there, and I'm not going to touch that. I'm going to create a tip, and then it's going to slowly expand thicker as we get toward the bottom. I'm just going to do a point here, and then gradually have that come out. With your brush, I would recommend starting with some more pressure here and just doing a quick flick out which will create more of those wispy lines toward the ends. Once you get toward the middle, you can move into your next color. I'm going to intentionally have these touch because I want that bleed in there, so it'll look really pretty. If you want to, you can take that color and just touch an area toward the top and have it bleed around there. It'll do exactly what it wants to, you don't have to guide it if that's still wet, which is pretty when you let it do that. If you have any area that's how I have right here, how it overlapped inside that clear area, just take a dry brush and separate it again. I'm going to go into my next color. Make sure it's wet, have it right next to that middle color so it blends. I'm going to create a bottom base of the feather, and that I will start coming back in with the strokes that are still upright. Purple to create. Now they have those tufts of hair right at the base of feathers, we're going to pretend that's what this is. I go back and take my middle tone and just create a little stem right there. If you find that there is too much separation here with the middle, just go through with some water and you can bring that in closer a little bit. You water when it's touching or coming up next against paints that are still wet, it'll end up bleeding into the area that you're connecting, so you don't have to go back with paint or anything like that. I think it looks a little bit bare on top so I'm just going to make sure that that's wet and go in. Here is a prime example of when you can just pick up some color with the tip of paper towel. Just bring that at the very top, and then you have a really fun pretty feather. As it starts to dry, you can come in and do a little more detail works, I'm going to show you that too because that can look really pretty. The top of this is pretty dry, so what I'm going to do is go in with a different color entirely. The smaller your brush, the better for those thinner lines, and then just go in. I'm only doing this real close to the center because I don't want it to take away from the feather overall, but I just want to add a little bit of a pop toward the middle, like that. Then I'll bring some of this down. This is still wet right here, so I'm going to be really careful. When it's only semi-wet it's not going to create as much of a drag, but you still want to be careful. I'm going to blend that out a bit, there you have a little more personality. 8. Cactus + Adding Ink: In this segment, I'm going to show you how to paint a real simple cactus. You're going to want your paint to be pretty watery. You're going to create the base of your cactus. So that's going to be your largest part, and it's just going to be an oblong shape. Again, make sure this is nice and wet and then go back in, and we're going to branch off of that. So right about here, press my brush down. It's going to do a little bleeding which I want because I like the effect, and then you're going to create another oblong area. Then on the other side, I'm going to do the same thing just a little lower. Pay attention to your connection. You don't want the base to be too thick because you want to see that it's stemming off. So once that's out, going to continue, and this guy, we're going to do the same thing. Then just won more here. You will put one right on this side as well. These are just some real simple oval shapes. Doesn't have to be anything too fancy. Then I'm going to give the illusion of another connection here. But it's going to stop because I'm going to put a pot write here once that dries a little bit more. But for now, I want to go back into the screen and add a little bit darker pigment, and that's for some contrast and you will see how that wants to bleed, and it actually creates that depth. Then if you have too much paint, you just remember you can go back and dab and it'll take some of that out. So just do this at the base of all of the shapes. You don't want to bring it up all the way through because then it will distort the point in the image. You can do it on the top, just make sure that you leave some space in the middle and then go ahead and go in and just create a real simple pot. It's fine if it looks sketchy, I actually think it looks nicer when it's sketchier. known that when it's wet, you can just dab some extra color in there for depth. Just don't do it the whole way through. Just pick a certain area that you want two bring that color up through, and then don't be afraid of whitespace because that adds additional texture. Then looking at this, I think that I want to actually add something else for not loving this composition. I'm going to come in and add another one right hear and then right here. Notice how those are getting more transparent. I am going to keep it that way. Let that dry, and we'll go back in and put some more detail in. The ink here cactus. All you're wanting to do is outline, and connect, and then create your pot, and then we're going to create some texture. I'm going to skip the area that it's connecting because that's going to be coming in like this. Then because I like my watercolor to look sketched more so, I'm just going to leave that white space right here and come in and create more of a sketch looking pot, and then just a couple texture lines like that. These are basically just round that I'm showing you a more sketch, a fact verses something with smooth lines. So you can see what that looks like also. It just helps in finding your illustration style, and then you don't have to leave those open because you can also have them have the illusion of coming from the back, like so. Then just go in and create these little spikes, mostly on the top. You don't want to bring it too far down. You can do sum on the side, and then go in and just do some little tiny dashes throughout. They don't all have to be the same, you could just do a couple on one. Let's seen how that just adds some texture. That's it. It can be really simple, but it actually looks really pretty when it's done. 9. Flower from Blob: In this segment I'm going to show you guys how to make a watercolor flower really simply. What I would recommend having is a larger round brush, because you're not going to be doing a lot of details to begin with it's mostly just going to be some quick washes. First you're going to be looking at this like, how is this going to turn into a flower? But, I'm going to show you a really easy way to make flowers and the key here is to just let loose. To get started it's going to be a wet-on-wet technique, so get your brush wet and just lay some water over your paper. Just an overall wash. Not too wet but just so enough. Looks good to me. Then take some color up on your brush and I'm going to start with a medium pink color. For the first bit here, we're not going to want it to be too transparent, but we're not going to want it to be too pigmented so just right in the middle. Then when you start, we're just going to do a stroke towards yourself with the side of the brush, like this. That's a little too transparent so feel free to put more color in there. Then another stroke just like that one, just underneath and don't make this perfect really just let it go. Then we're going to bring some of that up here. The key here it's like a wiggle movement.You don't want to leave it smooth, so just do a quick wiggle here. Then I'm going to stop with this color and I'm going to get something a little bit darker. You can choose a red or like a more purple and magenta, something a little more vibrant. I'm just going to bring that out this way, and then out this way. But notice my brush motions, you don't have to do these perfectly just something real quick. Something on the left side and then we're going to take that in to this side and I get this a little wetter. There we go. Push a little bit of that in the tip here for some dimension. When you're done with that, I'm just starting up some purple through here. While that's all still wet because I want the bleed, we're going to take a brighter color like the yellow and just push it in some of these areas. We're going to now create a small stem, so grab a green color and then we're just going to do a real thin stem and then off of that. Just how I showed you guys the leaves in the previous segments. We're just going to press down and lift. Press down and lift and then do one on this side. Now that this is dried a little bit more, take up more pigmented color and that could mean the same color that you use just not as wet, and just do some dabs in a couple areas, and you can choose where those go. You just want to have some contrast, and then bring some out toward the petals at the bottom. Then what I'm going to do now, is take a dry brush and come in and just press. Actually I want a little bit smaller, and pressing in here and you'll be creating some white space a little bit. Don't go too much because you don't want to overwork the paper because then it will start bawling up. Come back in with that green color and we're just going to have some leaves that pop out of the back. Now, take a paper towel and blot the middle, so you have a little bit of white space there and then you're going to take a darker color like a mahogany or black, and then you're just going to place small little dots. Then grab a red and make a little overlapping center and then something a little lighter perhaps an orange, and we're just going to bring that up and out a little bit. Basically it's like a curve, so down and out, out this way and then slight curve outside of that darker color and then go back in. I'm going to use some purple down here, and really all you're doing is you're setting your brush down, and pushing outward. Then you want these edges on the top to be little more define, so if you see anything getting lost, just go back and just at the tips there. Then go in with a green, that's a little bit darker and just visit the edges. So you can add a little dimension. Notice how quickly I'm moving, I'm not making this perfect. Once your paint is dry, I'm going to take a micron and this is just to know three, I would stick in between an 01 and 05, just so it's nice and thin, but if you'd like it to be thicker too there's nothing wrong with that, just whatever stylistically that you're going for. Then I'm going to just take an outline around the edges. I'm not going to follow this perfectly. Then these lines end, and you can make this as detailed or as loose as you want. Then go in for the middle. I just go in and create a little bit of texture, I don't usually make these look like anything in particular. Then the darker area, I'm going to put some lines in and just have them be a lot closer together and then just bring it around real short this way, and then come in and do some longer lines. Be sure that you pay attention to the direction that you're going to have your petals because, that is the way that you're going to want these lines to go. For example, if I were to bring this petal up this way, it would make sense with these lines curving the opposite direction. I'm going to bring this up. You're creating your petals wherever you want them to be. I just make a loose, choppy line. They can be smoother if you want the smoother look, I personally like them to be a little more imperfect. Then just create some lines around the edges of the petal. I typically leave the center blank and you see these leaves behind, and you give them the shade, and then continue with the petal here. Then see how this comes all the way up I'm actually going to make a petal that's behind and starting right here. That's the fun thing about watercolor, is the paint. If you trust the process to be unpredictable, then you're discovering as you're painting which is really fun. Then come up and out this way, there. For these bottom ones curving in and then because of the space here, I'm going to bring one overlapping this one and then put my lines in. I have some short and some longer, I would just play with that and do whatever you want for your composition. You can add one here if you want I'm going to leave that spot blank just because I like the way it looks. This leaf and then probably one main and then one in the back, so bring this here. Notice how I didn't bring this all the way up and out. Anytime that you want to come in and then think of it as a corner you're cutting, that corner out. What that can turn into, if you match here and here, is just a fold. It's like the petal is folded inward, leave this area alone and do your lines just underneath the fold. Then it looks like a folded petal, which is really cool. Then draw something towards the back here. I want to put a little more detail on my leaves but not too much, so I'm just going to do these wispy lines and then a couple of through my stem and that's it. See how that livens it up I am a big fan of ink with watercolor because I like them more illustrative as fact, and I think that you can do so much with ink. If you walk through it like that, you can see that it's actually really simple to set up. It's just a matter of finding where you want things to go, so don't let a blob overwhelm you because you can make it look really cool. 10. Tulip: I am going to show you how to do a simple tulip like flower. I want you to get your brush nice and wet and you can grab any color that you want to use. Now we're going to create the center, and all that you're going to do is throw simple to the leaves, just press down and then lift, and then press down and lift. You want to keep some open area in the middle, and then wash your brush off and grab another color. Again, you can choose whichever you like. I'm just going to pick an orange, and then I'm going two come down just on the outside of this, and then on the outside of here. Like that keeps the white space. Then I'm going to go back, and with a little bit darker color at the base of the first color and drag that up. Keep in mind, it's okay if it bleeds because that just adds to your painting. Then you want to do a nice hairline stem. If you don't have enough paint, just remember you can grab some orange and just set it where you put that water and it's only going to spread on those areas. Then I'm going to take a bright green and I'm going to do some leaves. So remember you just press down and lift. I want to go back in with a lighter color just to add a little more dimension. But that's it. That is all that you need to make a simple tulip. It's really easy. Then from there you can build on it and you can do several more. Let's say I want to add some more color to this composition. I can do center here, and then go back, and the outside and outside. Then we can bring that stem and to meet, and then add some leaves there. Then I'll go back in with that darker color and just touch the base. If it starts to bleed into your other flower, and it's a complimentary color, which means opposite sides of the color will, it will start to get mucky. Lift sum of that up so the water doesn't connect and then you can just go over to smooth out that area. You might want to let that dry a little bit more, if it's that water is both so it doesn't bleed into your other flour. Then I'm just taking a fuchsia, so it's the same, it's along the same color family, but it's just going to bee that dimension that we are looking for. More addition, and that's it. You can play with those you guys and see what you come up with because those are a lot of fun to you. We will let this dry. I'll show you what that looks like with ink as well. When it's dry, go back in with permanent pen. Again, this is the micron and I'm just going to create a real thin stem, and then my leaves. For this part I'm not going to create a shape so much as I am. Just some overall line like this. Just some sketchy lines, so you see overall, so see how quick that was you guys, and then it completely changes the entire vibe of this. That's another option. These are a lot of fun. I can't waited to seen what you guys come up with. 11. Galaxy: In this segment, I'm going to show you what's really popular right now is that galaxy technique with watercolor. To begin, I'm just going to create a wash on my paper. I'm going to take my lighter colors first and I would do some pinks, purple, and blue, maybe two different colors of blue, and then dark navy or black. Start with your lighter color and just set that wet on wet technique and then let it do some of its own blending. Grab a different shade if you want to. Set it right next to it. While all of that still wet, go in with your purple and just have that in some white spaces next to your pink. Don't be afraid to have some of this be darker and some of it be a lot more transparent. Then from here, go in with a light blue color and just dab that in a couple of areas. Then let that dry about halfway. Halfway dry looks like right about here, so some of that's dry, some of it's still wet. You want a little bit of bleeds, so that's why I say to keep some of it wet. Go in with either your dark navy or dark purple or your black, and I'm just using black. Then I'm going to just bring that color throughout. I'm just making sure that my brush is really wet and the paint is really wet, and just dragging that around throughout and it's okay to cover some of that color. I would even go in and mix, pick up some blue, dab it in your black and go in for some dimension. It's going to look a little bit silly against those dry colors, but once it dries, it'll make a lot more sense. Then any area that looks like it's too harsh of an edge, you can just go and pat that around those edges with some water. Before you let that dry, I would take some salt and sprinkle that over just a couple of areas. Go ahead and let that dry. Once that's dry, this is what it looks like and then you have these salt granules, so just rub those off and it'll break them loose, see how it's pushed the paint away from it. This is a good example right here, so the granules here and it oxidized and actually pushed all that paint away from it. It creates a really cool effect. To create the effect where it's actually in the sky, what you want do is take just some white paint. I'm using some white acrylic paint. What I do, I have toothbrush and I dip the toothbrush so it's a little bit wet and then, just apply some paint to the edge hear. Then from here, just rub that at the tip and do a splatter. It makes a really easy way to get all of those stars in there. Then what you can do from here, that's totally optional. If you have one of these white pens, there's a couple of different options, you can use a paint pen, you can use one of these gelly roll white pens or the uni ball is my favorite and you can go in once that's dry and create even more detailed areas of stars. I encourage you to get creative with the galaxy and then you can do this with other colors as well. 12. Tombow Water Blending: In this segment, I'm going to show you a quick trick that you can do with these Tombow Dual Brush Pens. This one's really, really fun and really simple, more simple than you'd probably think. It's one of the blending technique, you can do, and there's a couple of different ways that you can blend with these pens, but this one is water-based. So I'm going to show you that, I'm just going to write, a word, and then go back, and with a darker color just in the middle, and just set that about where I want this color to go, and then I'm going to go in with a darker color in the bottom. This doesn't have to be pretty because you already have the base of where you want your letters two go, and then we're just going to end up blending that anyway. So just get that color in there. Then, take a brush and dip it in your water, and then just go in here, and blending magic. Just like that, and then you have this really pretty natural Ambria fact. 13. Tombow Watercolor Background: In this segment, I'm going to show you an easy way to create a watercolor background, not using watercolors as we'll just be using Tombows again. I would select two or three colors. You'll need your watercolor paper and then you'll also need a page protector or a piece of plastic of some kind. It doesn't really matter what it is, as long as it's a non-porous surface, and once you have that, I usually place it over my paper just so I known exactly where I am placing the color and then I will color along that area with my Tombow pen and then I'm going to drag this one through into it and then another at the bottom, and I drag the darker up through the lighter. Then I'm going to take just a [inaudible] and, then I'll turn that over and place it onto my paper. Then the cool thing about this is, I can leave it as is and drag it off and then let it dry and it creates a really cool textured effect or I can press it down; you guys make sure you're using paper towels for this because it can get messy, and then you create this really pretty ambery effect. If you have any on the side, just dab that, and then you have a really cool watercolor background, and then just let that dry and then you can put some lettering over it. 14. Watercolor Brush Lettering: In this segment, I am going to quickly introduce to you Brush Lettering. I'm just going to be touching on this briefly because the class is more focused on watercolor in general. Just write Hello and you can seen how it starts off a little more vibrant and then gets more transparent as it tilts towards the end. You can go back in here and add color. You can dip again and then continue. I'm actually going to be switching colors as I go. Now, I have an orange and if I set this here, there's going to be a light bleed. Then you can also do the same thing with a regular brush. This one is nothing special, it's just a very inexpensive number zero and it's not too long, it's not too short, it has some flexibility. So there's a little more control when it's stiffer, but this one's nice and then it is a round brush, so I'll show you that. The only difference with that one is that you have to dip into the water versus squeezing the tube. I really like the Aquash brush, but I have to say, even the fine point is a little larger than what I like with my own preferences. Although it's really convenient, I like to opt for these smaller, finer point brushes. 15. Project Time!: That's all that I have for you guys in this class. For your project, I would love to see some of your swatch work, some of your practice, because for one, it's a lot of fun to do, and then two, it's a lot of fun to see what you guys come up with when you're blending. Then I also love to seen your favorite watercolor choice from the projects that you've learned in this class. I can't wait to see what you guys come up with. Thank you again.